Greg Scott Brown
Aquaman


For starters, he breathed underwater.
That would have come in handy the

summer I was expected to sink into
the grimy abyss of the Municipal Pool.

Instead, I could not breach the surface,
could not plunge my high-strung head

beneath, so full of the dread of drowning.
Me, and legions of kids called Tadpoles.

*

Aquaman, created by men to teach boys
about men, had nothing on the simpering

girl with viridescent hair who needed me
to stay below the water-line, to be a good

soldier, to suck it up, and to tread the briny
like a motherfucker. Of course, she had no

cinder-block pecs, no glitzy, greenorange
formfitting manwrapper straight out of

pro-wrestling by way of the Ballets Russes.
And did I mention? Aquaman could hold

his breath. Or no. Not hold it.
Not need to hold it.

Like my uncle, who, the family claimed,
could submerge six minutes or some

unfathomable eternity. A real man,
surely—his furry, sea-lion trunk bobbing

along the lapis veneer of a Holiday
Inn pool, martini held aloft.

Or, like Dirk, the young man charged
with the Tadpoles' salvation.

*

Dirk Davenport was older bigger hairier
than me, and reeked of Vitalis and Hai

Karate, even soaking wet. A dark
Speedo hung below his narrow waist—

a kind of censor's black bar, riveting
attention to what it concealed.

Never flinching from a dive into
the stinging pool (the Tadpoles said

it smelled of jizz)
Dirk flourished in the chlorinated depths

like some outlandish strain of coral
no landlubber could ever contrive.

I loved Dirk Davenport because he
could swim, could propel his glorious,

Utopian frame from one rough edge
of the pool to the other without a whiff

of despair. That whole summer long,
while Dirk breezily traversed

the murk of masculinity, all the other
useless boys and I were cast like chum

into public pools for our own good—
everything suspended in the pitiless blue.

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